Welcome to the home of The Question Evolution Project. Presenting information demonstrating that there is no truth in minerals-to-man evolution, and presenting evidence for special creation. —Established by Cowboy Bob Sorensen

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Pseudogenes and Pseudoscience

Some people have difficulty learning. For example, with the "junk DNA" fiasco, scientists put on their Darwin spectacles, examined a section of the genome, declared that things they didn't understand were "junk" — and were embarrassed by creationists, who said all along that it was not junk.

A similar thing happened with pseudogenes. They look sorta like genes, but they're not really genes. So they're not important, right? Actually, they are important. The PTEN pseudogene is much more complicated than anyone imagined. Perhaps if they removed the evolution glasses and did not act so hastily, evolutionary scientists might get closer to the truth sooner.

Not only have many pseudogenes been proven to be highly functional, a
recent study has unveiled mind-boggling complexity behind the PTEN
pseudogene, showing that it functions both forwards and backwards as
part of an intricate gene network.

Pseudogenes were once thought to be nothing but genomic fossils of
broken genes littering the genomes of plants and animals deposited over
eons of evolutionary history. However, as scientists begin to unravel
the complexity of the genome, they are discovering that pseudogenes are
not so "pseudo" after all.

One of the most widely studied pseudogenes in humans has been the "PTEN
pseudogene." It is an unprocessed pseudogene, meaning that it has all
of the same DNA features of a regular protein-coding gene, except that
it lacks the ability to code for a protein due to specific changes in
its sequence. The PTEN pseudogene is an important player in human health
because of its ability to regulate another gene with which it shares
similarity with called simply PTEN. Together, and along with a host of
other important genes, they control cell growth. When the PTEN
pseudogene gene is disrupted, the outcome is often cancer.